Mitla

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Mitla is an archaeological site in the Mexican state of Oaxaca , which is famous for its pre-Columbian buildings with wall ornamentation that is unique in Mesoamerica . The Zapotec place name is Lyobaa ("burial place"), the Nahuatl -speaking Aztecs made it Mictlán ("place of the dead"). The palace complex of Mitla is a UNESCO World Heritage Site .

Palace in Mitla with ornamental fields

location

Mitla is about 45 km (driving distance) southeast of Oaxaca de Juárez at an altitude of 1680  m in the local area of ​​the small town of San Pablo Villa de Mitla . Today the place is a modern Zapotec city and a popular tourist destination for visitors to Oaxaca. The place has a small museum and houses a large market. Most of the buildings from pre-Hispanic times are at the northern end of the town. The majority of the residents speak a variant of Zapotec.

Pre-Columbian Mitla

Grupo de las Columnas
Grupo de la Iglesia
Patio north

history

Although archaeological evidence suggests that Mitla dates back to 500 BC. The oldest buildings date back to around 200 AD. Buildings of pre-Columbian style up to the arrival of the Spanish Conquistadors (1520) can be found. The city has been continuously inhabited since then; Parts of the modern city were built over the pre-Hispanic Mitla, but some groups of the old aristocratic palace complex were preserved. In its heyday, Mitla had about 10,000 inhabitants and stretched for more than 1 km along both banks of the Río Mitla . While the population of the neighboring city of Monte Albán increased, the Mitlas decreased. A residential town became a town with increasing cultic importance, which was apparently served by the first surviving buildings.

With the beginning of the Mixtec invasion around 1000 AD, a hill in the west of Mitlas was surrounded by a stone wall and fortified with a citadel . Mitla's importance increased with the fall of Monte Albán: the southern Zapotecs made Mitla their capital, where the high priest / priest-king maintained his residence. Although Mitla remained a Zapotec city, the Mixtec influence can be seen in imported multicolored vessels and remains of destroyed frescoes in the style of Mixtec illustrated manuscripts .

In 1494, the Aztecs captured Mitla and sacked the city. When the Spaniards took over the place, they saw their efforts to proselytize the local indigenous people countered by their original beliefs, which were manifested in old buildings like those in Mitla. In order to control or combat the problem, the Spaniards built new churches on the foundations of old temples, the materials of which they used for the new buildings.

In 2010 the Mitla palace complex was recognized as a World Heritage Site together with Yagul .

Research history

A number of Spanish colonial-era authors mentioned the well-constructed pre-Columbian buildings. Alexander von Humboldt published a description of the place in 1810. Eduard Seler studied the wall paintings . Some excavations and repairs to the buildings were carried out in 1901 under the direction of Leopoldo Batres, then General Inspector of Monuments. The Mexican government undertook further excavations at the site in the mid-1930s and early 1960s.

architecture

While in most Mesoamerican cities the focus is on religious buildings, Mitla is believed to be a palace city in which even the dead were buried in underground tombs that are modeled on the palaces. The same applies to Yagul and Zaachila , two neighboring cities of Mitlas.

The earliest structures in Mitla (from the late formative and early classical periods ) are Zapotec , rudiments of the postclassical period, which were built during the Mixtec settlement of the place, often show an interesting mix of styles of Zapotec and Mixtec elements. Five building complexes including the Grupo de las Columnas ("Group of Columns"), a former palace on the east side, were preserved. They each consist of three large rooms, which are arranged around tombs and a courtyard.

One of the rooms, known as the Salón de las Columnas ("Room of the Columns") houses six monolithic columns that once supported the roof. Two graves with a cross-shaped plan were also discovered here. To the north is the Grupo de la Iglesia ("Church Group"), a palace with the colonial Catholic Church in the middle. The pre-Columbian buildings that have survived are similar to the construction of the Grupo de las Columnas , but smaller. They still show traces of painting.

ornamentation

The palace walls are decorated with unmistakable geometric mosaics that are characteristic of the buildings in Mitla: meanders of steps , so-called grecas , and zigzag ribbons are among these typical decoration patterns. Each frieze is worked as a mosaic and consists of up to 100,000 separate, precisely worked stones; in some places where, for structural reasons, large stone blocks were used instead of small stones, these continue the same mosaic pattern as a relief. While many ornaments in the various cultures of the world are assigned a disastrous ( apotropaic ) meaning, the abstract, varied and only parts of the wall surfaces inside and outside of the wall surface covering ornamental motifs Mitla seem to have a purely decorative character.

photos

  • Exterior wall panels with ornaments

  • Outer wall ornament with paint residues

  • Hall of the pillars

  • Ceiling reconstruction and wall ornaments

  • Old frescoes

museum

Some of the objects found in Mitla are exhibited in the Museo Frisell de Arte Zapoteca Mitla in the heart of the city.

See also

Web links

Commons : Mitla  - collection of images, videos and audio files
  • Entry on the UNESCO World Heritage Center website ( English and French ).

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Daniel, Glyn: Encyclopedia of Archeology , Bergisch Gladbach, 1996, ISBN 3-930656-37-X , p. 330
  2. ↑ Eduard Seler: The wall paintings of Mitla, a Mexican picture writing in fresco . Berlin, Asher 1895 (new edition Finis Mundi 2016)

Coordinates: 16 ° 55 '40.4 "  N , 96 ° 21' 34.2"  W.